Many prior art plant watering systems are known in the art and include both non-self watering and self watering systems. Non-self watering systems often rely on overhead sprinkling mechanisms or the periodic flooding of an open container in which plant pots are placed. These systems are disadvantageous, amongst other reasons, in that they tend to lose water through evaporation and create conditions of saturation or drought in the media with which they are used. In addition, simpler systems tend to require daily attention and maintenance while more advanced systems tend to be undesirably complex and expensive.
With respect to self watering systems, there are several known techniques for implementing such systems. They include systems that utilize capillary strips which descend into a reservoir under a potted plant and systems having reservoirs maintained under vacuum pressure that deliver water to adjacent potted plants, amongst others. The capillary strip systems are disadvantageous in that as the strips begin to clog or otherwise degrade, the capillary force becomes insufficient to extract water (against the force of gravity) from the reservoir. Furthermore, providing the reservoir under the plant pot may also result in inefficient pot design and difficulties in the delivery of replacement water.
The systems that maintain reservoirs under pressure tend to have difficulty regulating the amount of water delivered to an adjacent pot and are generally either undesirably complex or fragile. The complex systems include those that have many parts causing them to be expensive to produce and complicated to operate. Fragile systems include those that are highly susceptible to malfunction due to incorrect positioning and those that utilize components that are physically fragile.